News & Insights > Insights >  What are the 4 major challenges facing CRM today? 

  •  By Margot Chamlou, Paul Tavella

In just 3 years, CRM has become central to business performance. Regulatory changes, the COVID-19 crisis, the inexorable disappearance of cookies and increasingly demanding consumer expectations... 4 factors that have prompted brands to focus on their customer database and reposition CRM at the heart of commercial challenges (increasing sales, reducing acquisition costs, product cross-selling, strong correlation between customer satisfaction and customer value...) and company strategy (moving upmarket, rejuvenating the customer base, developing brand preference, new services...). We take a look at the 4 major challenges facing CRM departments in 2025. 

1/ A new engine for growth, CRM is anchored in the company's business priorities  

Relationship management is no longer the sole vocation of CRM. By integrating strategic corporate objectives, CRM transforms customer relationship management into a strategic development lever, capable of optimizing business processes, improving customer loyalty and engagement, and increasing sales.  

The democratization of data and the acceleration of omnichannel marketing make CRM, via CDP, the discipline of choice for unifying customer data in a single place and activating it across all contact channels. This is an advantage for marketing departments, who can control all marketing activities in the customer journey from a single tool. Advertising pressure is better controlled, the most effective channels more easily identified... and thanks to navigation data concentrated in a single tool, building ad hoc audiences and personalizing interactions is all the easier.

By leveraging analytical data to identify sales opportunities and personalizing customer interactions, CRM activations increase their R.O.I. and contribute more strongly to the company's business priorities.  

However, with privacy and RGPD concerns on the rise, proper management of customer data is now crucial. Companies must therefore comply with regulations on the protection and security of customer data while ensuring transparency on data use to foster a long-lasting relationship with their customers.  

2/ These ambitions come with a number of challenges...

Implementing and maximizing CRM is not without its challenges. 

The first challenge is the volume and quality of customer data. This is fundamental to CRM success. Data that is incomplete, inaccurate, duplicated or too low in volume, compromises the effectiveness of CRM, undermines the efficiency of campaigns, and eats away at the relational capital between the brand and its customers. To address this pre-requisite, many companies have accelerated the deployment and monitoring of new collection levers, as well as the implementation of rigorous processes to guarantee the quality, granularity and regular updating of customer information (progressive qualification processes, data management dashboards, data governance, etc.). 

The costs associated with implementing and using a CRM system can quickly add up. If the system is not fully exploited, this can lead to increased sales and marketing expenditure. Companies need to nurture the volume and granularity of their CRM data to ensure that they derive maximum value from it.

Finally, process automation represents both a challenge and an opportunity. Optimizing workflows and automating repetitive tasks improves efficiency. However, this requires careful planning to ensure that automation does not complicate operations. 

Finally, the gradual disappearance of third-party cookies. While this marks an important step forward for consumer data protection, it also represents a major challenge for the digital marketing industry. Third-party cookies are essential for understanding customer journeys, retargeting ads, personalizing displays, creating audience segments and measuring the effectiveness of advertising campaigns. 

Overcoming these challenges requires a proactive, multi-skilled approach (data, CRM, digital, media, legal, IT). Involving all stakeholders from the outset of the project, investing in ongoing training, and regularly measuring results are key steps to increasing the contribution of CRM to Retail and e-Commerce sales. Only by aligning all stakeholders, A/B testing and measuring the impact of each activation, can companies transform their CRM into a lever for growth and efficiency.

3/ The new demands of customer relations

Differentiation and personalization have become two central elements of CRM strategies. Indeed, asserting one's relational uniqueness is the best way to increase brand preference1. Similarly, improving the customer experience - through personalized interactions, marketing pressure management and customer knowledge - is the best way to retain customers and increase the duration and value of the relationship2.  

Faced with growing customer expectations, companies are accelerating their efforts in 3 areas:

  • Collecting, qualifying and analyzing customer data: using new collection levers and analysis tools to qualify profiles and understand customer preferences and behaviors. 
  • Define customer paths & propose personalized recommendations: customize customer paths by proposing channels, products and services adapted to the needs of each customer. 
  • Maximize the benefits of artificial intelligence: anticipate customer needs (predictive AI), multiply the personalization of interactions (generative AI).

4/ AI and CRM: between benefits and risks 

AI applications for CRM:  

As seen above, CRM tools manage the relationship and interactions between a company and its customers, while exploiting data to personalize exchanges. AI improves CRM efficiency. AI analyzes and categorizes data on a massive scale, AI predicts customer behavior, AI automates repetitive tasks.  

Thanks to a better understanding of customer needs and expectations, which reduces the need for manual analysis, AI facilitates access to customer knowledge and its dissemination to all customer-facing and back-office teams. Thanks to task automation (translation into several languages, multi-format declensions, localization), Generative AI multiplies the versioning and personalization potential of CRM assets, and reduces related costs. 

However, the adoption of AI solutions requires the rapid definition of a legal framework, as the perception - real or exaggerated - of the risks associated with the sharing of sensitive data in terms of security and confidentiality, is holding back the impetus of large companies, even though their employees are already using them every week. Finally, the fear of dehumanizing interactions persists. This is turning “All AI Gen” projects into hybrid “Human + AI” or “augmented agent” projects. This transformation requires a great deal of acculturation and training of teams, so that they no longer see AI as a rival, but as a way of enhancing their intuitu personae relationship with statistical intelligence, simply to do their job better and faster. 

These 4 challenges of data-driven CRM re-emphasize the need for a customer-centric approach. This compass, when prioritizing projects, arbitrating between personalization levers, selecting solutions... enables us to answer, in a demanding and consistent way, the question “for what customer benefit?”. 

The business expert :

Bertrand Destailleur

Associate Customer Experience

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  • Digital
  • Customer relationship
Credit : Alvaro Reyes

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